With another breath, I unfold the pages. The letters are all clearly written on whatever paper must have been on hand: stationery, spiral notebooks, a rumpled scrap. The ink is different on each one: some in black, some in blue. One is scrawled in smudged pencil lead. The top letter is the oldest, dated a few months after my family moved to Los Angeles, the black ink scrawled so hard there are small punctures where the pen pushed through the paper.

D—

My mother is dead. The doctors say it was an aneurism. Personally, I think she simply did not want to be here any longer. I empathize.

I can’t cry. I keep trying but nothing happens. There is just this fucking heaviness, a thick black ball in my throat. But no tears. You never cried. No matter how badly we argued, I never saw you shed a tear. Neither have I. Which makes me wonder why it is that we can’t cry. Are we some kind of broken? Or do you cry when no one is looking? These are things I find myself wondering at odd times. You know, in those moments between trying to cry so that I can grieve. I do grieve, but not in the way I expected.

Point of fact—and I’ll only confess this to you, who will never receive this letter—I am happy too.

She left everything to me. The house, the money, everything.

It isn’t the money that makes me happy. It’s the freedom.

Freedom, Delilah. That’s what she’s given me.

I know you think I always had money. I had nothing. It was all hers. Her family money. A small allowance is all I got. He—my father—wouldn’t allow me to work. No Saint would be seen laboring for money. Which is a load of bullshit since he came from nothing, he just didn’t want anyone to know it.

That necklace I sent—the one you want no part of—was the sum of all my savings. Years of squirreling away my funds. My ticket out of here. I wanted you to have it: a penance for all my misdeeds. Melodramatic on my part, don’t you think?

Doesn’t matter now. You don’t want it. And I have more money than I need. Obscene amounts.

The money allows me to breathe free.

For the first time, I can breathe.

And it’s all because my mom is dead.

My happiness is a twisted thing.

Are we all so fucked up, Delilah? Or is it just me?

Whatever the case, I’m getting out of here. Packing up and going to Berkeley—not my father’s alma mater, Alabama, as he demanded. Because, fuck him.

Anyway, the funeral is tomorrow. If you were here, would you hold my hand? I’m guessing no. But I wonder, if I held yours would you let go or would politeness keep your hand in mine. I wish I could find out.

—Macon

“I would have held your hand,” I whisper, my hands shaking. “If I had been there, I would have done it.”

But Macon is gone. At some point, he left the kitchen. I hurt for him, for the pain and confusion that is so clear on the page. I want to cry for him. But he’s right; I never can truly manage it. I had no idea he couldn’t either.

It’s his voice in my head now, telling me to keep reading. I pick up the next letter.

Delilah,

I graduated today. Magna cum laude in classic literature—a degree my father would have hated. Not that he was here to tell me. There was no one here to see me graduate. I did my walk, congratulated my friends, and went home.

Do you know what I found waiting for me?

A letter from D. Baker.

I thought it was from you. I swear, it was as if your ghost walked up behind me and licked my neck. Took me forever to open the damn thing. I thought, maybe she regrets returning the necklace. Maybe she knows I’m in California and wants to meet up.

Stupid, huh?

It wasn’t from you, Delilah Baker. It was from Darrell and Andie Baker. Yes, your parents sent me a card offering best wishes upon my graduation. I have no idea how they knew or how they even found me; I haven’t talked to a Baker since the night of the prom.

They sent me a card with a hundred dollar bill inside. Me. The guy who tormented their eldest and dumped their youngest. I couldn’t believe it. I sat there, holding the card with that crisp Benjamin staring up at me, and laughed.

I inherited three hundred and thirty-one million dollars from my mother, (Yes, you read that correctly. I couldn’t believe it either when I was informed) and your parents, thinking I was a poor college kid all alone, sent a little something to start me off in life.

If I was able to cry, I think I would have done it then.